Microsoft probing reported flaws in Windows XP SP2 - Computerworld

Microsoft probing reported flaws in Windows XP SP2 - Computerworld: "Microsoft Corp. yesterday said it is investigating claims that several new vulnerabilities have been found in Windows XP Service Pack 2 by security firm Finjan Software Inc. in San Jose. Finjan on Tuesday announced that it had found as many as 10 'serious' flaws in SP2."

Astronomy & Space Monthly

Astronomy & Space Monthly

It's The Values Stupid

I'm back from a self-imposed hiatus similar to during the start of the Iraq war. I get tired when all there is politics, politics, politics. Ironically what follows is also political but has a philosophical/theological bent. That's a lot more interesting to me.

Now that the devastating defeat of the Democrats is coming in, everyone is doing a post mortem. So far, I've seen them be almost exclusively issue-oriented. On the other hand, I believe Senator Christopher Dodd nails it.

"On those sets of questions, more than anything else, is where we ended up losing these races," Dodd said in a conference call. He also announced he would not enter a fight to be-come minority leader of the U.S. Senate.

"We better understand that you got to connect with people, not just on issues, but on values as well," said Connecticut?s senior senator, who easily won a fifth term Tuesday.

Dodd, 60, said he was "fearful that we are conceding too much of that ground and assuming that people will vote with us because they agree with us on our plan, but don?t see us as connecting with them on cultural and social and value issues."

You cannot treat values as an issue. Values are above the issues just as metaphysics is above physics in Aristotle. Values are the ousios (essence or substance) of Red State political thinking. Issues are the accidental outworking of the substance of values. You can disagree even violently on the issues but if you have common value systems or worldviews then you get support from Red State America.

So, you can have Cheney and Bush disagree on how to deal with gay marriage and this causes no stir because Red State America is convinced they both value marriage. Also, you get a divide between Bush and Kerry even though their policies concerning gay marriage are almost indistinguishable. This is because Kerry failed to show that he valued marriage. I'll explain why below.

For Blue State America, what is necessary is for the candidate to have the right catalog of issues. Values are doing. Since President Clinton supported the right programs, he was considered virtuous. On the other hand, for Red State America values are defined by who you are. Good works are the outworking of being a good person. To use the Biblical metaphor, a good tree produces good fruit. President Clinton cheating on his wife made him not virtuous independent of the policies he supported. There is no compartmentalization in Red State moral thinking.

So, how do Democrats address this way of thinking?

1. Make sure your value systems are coherent. For example, if you say life begins at conception then the policies you propose need to be consistent with it. It is better to say you believe life begins at birth and be pro choice. This latter view is respected far more by Red State America.


2. Don't impute motives. Assume that Red State America supports a policy because they believe it is right. They support the ban on gay marriages because of supporting families, not out of hate of gays. Because the Democrats didn't understand this, they failed to understand why Kerry's comments concerning Mary Cheney were so offensive. Red State America values families. Kerry attacked a family. It had nothing at all to do with any issue including the gay marriage amendment. It was not political. It was personal. The same thing goes for the Swift Boat Veterans. Kerry offended their honor and never rectified it. That's why this had legs.


3. Don't belittle faith, but leverage it. Democrats treat taxes as an issue. They should treat it as a value. When the Alabama Governor argued that raising taxes was a Christian duty, Alabamans raised taxes. The loyalty of Red State America is to their Biblical values and not necessarily to any particular issue.


4. Avoid worldly sophistication. The worldly part is important. When nuance is used as an excuse for incoherent and relativistic thinking it will be uniformly rejected. On the other hand, if you properly work through a complicated ethical dilemma, Red State America will cut you some slack. For example, when dealing with stem-cell research Bush walked through how he tried to value current life when it conflicted with saving lives in the future. Red State America gave him a pass. The reason was that he confirmed his dedication to the principle of valuing life. Even when he reached different conclusions from those who thought he should have used the exiting lines, he still got a pass. The moral thinking must be without guile and grounded in absolute principles, however. If it reflects relativism or post-modernism it will be dismissed as self-serving "spin".

Democrats are failing miserably on the list above. In fact, they are doing something far worse than just missing it. Because they fail to understand Red State America, they move on to insult it. They call it stupid and simple. They insult the basis for the moral reasoning, the Bible. There is nothing that would necessarily connect Red State America with conservative politics. The reason why conservative politics has resonated is because only conservative politics affirms moral absolutes but wisely leaves the set of those absolutes undefined. Only the conservatives argue tu quoque with Red State America. They start with their values and then argue the policies. Democrats start with the policies and then belittle and insult Red State America for disagreeing with them. No business would ever think of doing this because it is bad business. It is also bad politics.

And the Winner Is...

The American voter.

The loser:

Osama bin Laden. Go back to your cave.

OBL Tape and Kerry's Rhetoric

Both candidates for President are honest about their desire to defeat terrorism in general and Osama bin Laden in particular. What I want to explore is whether out-of-control campaign rhetoric unintentionally gives aid and comfort to the enemy.

John Kerry has used the Book of James during the campaign, ""Words without deeds are meaningless -- especially when people are dying every day." I want to look at a different passage in James. James 3:2-6

2We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.

3When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. 4Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. 5Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

Pastor Rick Warren refers to people described in this passage as "verbal arsonists".

After the Oklahoma City bombing President Bill Clinton accused talk radio of being "purveyors of hate and division". He told the Detroit Free Press, "I cannot defend some of the things some of these more extreme talk-show hosts have said, even more extreme than that in these little short-wave programs that plainly are encouraging violence." President Clinton has a point. Words do have consequences and "verbal arsonists" can indeed provoke violence.

Now, let's look at some quotes from the Osama bin Laden video:

Then, what happened was that he was impressed by the monarchies and the military regimes, and he was jealous of them staying in power for tens of years, embezzling the public money without any accountability. And he moved the tyranny and suppression of freedom to his own country, and they called it the Patriot Act, under the disguise of fighting terrorism. And Bush, the father, found it good to install his children as governors and leaders.

Now John Kerry:

Let me tell you what I think makes someone unfit for duty. Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead this nation. Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting 45 million Americans go without healthcare makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting the Saudi Royal Family control our energy costs makes you unfit. Handing out billions of government contracts to Halliburton while you're still on their payroll makes you unfit. That's the record of George Bush and Dick Cheney. And that only scratches the surface. I believe it's time to move America in a new direction; I believe it's time to set a new course for America. And together, you, John Edwards and I will do that on November 2nd.

Bin Laden:

He was more interested in listening to the child's story about the goat rather than worry about what was happening to the towers. So, we had three times the time necessary to accomplish the events.

According to the Washington Post:

At a morning appearance before minority journalists in Washington, Kerry faulted Bush for spending seven minutes reading to Florida schoolchildren after learning the World Trade Center had been attacked. "Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear that America is under attack, I would have told those kids very nicely and politely that the president of the United States has something that he needs to attend to," Kerry said.

In fact Kerry's communication director has an eery simularity with bin Laden:

"John Kerry is not the type of leader who will sit and read 'My Pet Goat' to a group of second-graders while America is under attack," said Kerry campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter, a reference to the book Mr. Bush continued reading with children for several minutes after his chief of staff informed him of the second World Trade Center plane attack.

Kerry needs to have much greater self control in his speech. As the Book of James would say, John Kerry's tongue is a "world of evil". He simply does not have the character to be President.

Virtual Church

The BBC is reporting the appointment of a pastor for the Internet. I am not sure this is such a good idea. This is yet another step of the individualization of spirituality. I wonder how well such fellowship can be real rather than just merely virtual.

Alyson Leslie, a lay pastor, will run i-Church, a community of worshippers from all over the world who will congregate at the website for prayers in chatrooms, webcast services and e-mail socialising.

It is the first time a web community will be a fully recognised Anglican church. Although parishioners from many countries are taking part, the church will nominally be part of the Diocese of Oxford, which is funding the £15,000-a-year venture - a fraction of the cost of maintaining many physical churches.

In the midst of defending Donald Rumsfeld, New York Times columnist, William Safire, gave an intriguing argument for Rumsfeld to stay: Donald Rumsfeld is the civil libertarian in the Bush Administration. That's not something I automatically associate with Rummy.

Because today's column will generate apoplectic e-mail, a word about contrarian opinion: Shortly after 9/11, with the nation gripped by fear and fury, the Bush White House issued a sweeping and popular order to crack down on suspected terrorists. The liberal establishment largely fell cravenly mute. A few lonely civil libertarians spoke out. When I used the word "dictatorial," conservatives, both neo- and paleo-, derided my condemnation as "hysterical."

One Bush cabinet member paid attention. Rumsfeld appointed a bipartisan panel of attorneys to re-examine that draconian edict. As a result, basic protections for the accused Qaeda combatants were included in the proposed military tribunals.

Perhaps because of those protections, the tribunals never got off the ground. (The Supreme Court will soon, I hope, provide similar legal rights to suspected terrorists who are U.S. citizens.) But in the panic of the winter of 2001, Rumsfeld was one of the few in power concerned about prisoners' rights. Some now demanding his scalp then supported the repressive Patriot Act.